Happy Friday and welcome back to another installment of The Weekly Download! For those of you who are celebrating on Sunday, we hope you have a safe and spooky Halloween.
This week in your favourite digital news roundup: Facebook changes its name to Meta, LinkedIn adds new features to company pages and expands freelancer discovery tools and Instagram brings Stories links to all accounts, plus some Friday Fun!
Let’s dive in!
Facebook is Officially Named Meta
Last week, we touched on speculations that Facebook was considering changing the name of its parent company to Meta. Yesterday, they made it official.
The name is inspired by the company’s vision to bring the metaverse to life. This will include 3D spaces to “socialize, learn, collaborate and play in ways that go beyond what we can imagine,” says Meta.
The metaverse that the company plans to build includes virtual reality, augmented reality, smart glasses, investments in immersive learning, responsible innovation, and so much more.
You can watch Mark Zuckerberg’s full keynote here.
LinkedIn Adds New Features for Company Pages
Millions of people have quit their jobs as a result of the pandemic, and the hiring market has become highly competitive. Now, professionals are searching for positions that better suit their skill set, have a more fulfilling workplace culture, and better support their lifestyle.
LinkedIn took note of these trends and has developed new features to help businesses attract the right talent.
“We’ve invested in a feature that allows you to convey whether your organization is working remote, hybrid or on-site in your LinkedIn Page header, and additional space to clarify your evolving policies on vaccines, pay adjustments, and more,” says LinkedIn.
LinkedIn has also added a new reporting tool that allows you to follow up to nine competitors in your LinkedIn Page Analytics:
“This new feature also allows you to track and compare their follower growth and organic content performance with yours. These performance metrics are just the start, soon we’ll add more metrics, such as engagement rate, to help you adapt your content strategy in a meaningful way.”
Lastly, they’ll be notifying employees when new LinkedIn content has been published to encourage re-sharing and engagement.
LinkedIn Expands Freelancer Discovery
In addition to making updates on company pages, LinkedIn is also working on making it easier for companies and brands to find freelancers.
Freelancers now have the option to add a “Services” list to their profile to allow for advanced discovery. Once their services have been discovered by a company or person, they can send a request for a freelancer’s services without having to invite the user to “Connect” in order to have a conversation. They’ve even set up a dashboard to manage requests!
LinkedIn has also added controls that allow freelancers to choose which client reviews are featured on their service page.
Learn more about LinkedIn’s updated here.
Instagram Enables all Accounts to Share Links in Stories
Marketers around the world are letting out a big sigh of relief after Instagram announced you no longer need 10K followers to add links in Stories.
As explained by Instagram:
“When we first introduced Stories links, the feature was limited to verified accounts or those with a certain number of followers. We’ve heard from the rest of our community that they also want to share things that matter with their friends and family. Whatever you’re into, from cooking to volunteering or shopping, you now have a space to share in Stories – regardless of your account size.”
Links in Stories will no longer be shared in a “swipe up” fashion. Instead, users will be able to add a Sticker that includes a URL, allowing for more design control when posting. This update may seem small to some but could be a game changer for smaller brands trying to increase social media engagement and website traffic.
Friday Fun
The pep talk we didn’t know we needed!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CVf8S_0Dx22/
